Laboratories

Five apps, one LIMS, one Odoo platform.

How LFG Paris, the world’s oldest gemmological laboratory, replaced its separate compliance, operations and reporting tools with one integrated platform in four months.

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A close-up of a laboratory microscope, focused on its revolving nosepiece with several silver objective lenses of different magnifications (4x, 10x, 40x), marked with colored rings. A specimen slide sits on the black mechanical stage with its measurement scale visible. In the upper left, a gloved hand reaches toward the eyepieces. The bright white background keeps all attention on the precision instrument and its metallic details.

Sector

Laboratories. Gemmology and gem certification.

Footprint

1 country (France), 1 site (Paris).

Scale

12 to 14 daily users on the integrated Odoo platform.

Dynapps partner

Since 2022.

Backing

Independent. Founded 1929 by the Diamond Trade Union Chamber.

How it started

Before Dynapps stepped in.

LFG Paris, the Laboratoire Français de Gemmologie, founded in 1929 by the Diamond Trade Union Chamber, entered the early 2020s as the world’s oldest gemmological laboratory still in continuous operation. Aurélien Delaunay, the laboratory’s Director and a working gemologist himself, ran the lab on a stack of separate software tools, each handling a different slice of the workflow. The compliance demands placed on ISO IEC 17025-accredited laboratories were rising, and the gap between what the lab’s tools could prove and what its auditors needed to see was widening. The choice approaching: keep stitching evidence together at audit time, or move the lab onto one system that produced the evidence as a side effect of operating.

Lab technician using a pipette behind a fume hood

The challenge

Where the cracks showed.

The source frames the laboratory’s problem as a single condition rather than a set of moments. Two threads stand out.

  • Compliance under separate roofs

    Maintaining ISO IEC 17025 compliance across multiple unconnected tools meant data security and traceability had to be argued, tool by tool, every audit cycle. The lab's audit response had to be reconstructed each time it was needed, never produced as a single trail.

  • Reporting at a remove

    Before Dynapps, LFG Paris had no dedicated reporting solution. Clients seeking certification data and gemologists checking their own analytical history both ended up routing through manual exports.

The turn

Why LFG chose Odoo with an embedded LIMS over Salesforce and SAP.

By late 2022, pressing needs at LFG Paris had compressed what was initially projected as a multi-year transformation into a four-month plan. The lab engaged an independent IT consultant to run the initial assessment and shortlist suitable systems.

Three paths on the table:

  • 01

    A familiar CRM stack with a separate LIMS

    Salesforce was on the shortlist by reputation. The architecture would have kept the LIMS outside the ERP, the pattern LFG was trying to leave behind.

  • 02

    A familiar ERP stack with a separate LIMS

    SAP was on the shortlist by reputation. The architecture would have kept the LIMS outside the ERP, separate from the system of record.

  • 03

    Dynapps with Odoo and an embedded LIMS

    Aurélien Delaunay named the deciding factor cleanly: the only provider offering a LIMS fully embedded inside an ERP, while also being compliant with ISO IEC 17025. An unfamiliar platform that nonetheless matched the architecture LFG needed. They committed.

A close-up of a laboratory experiment centered on a 250 ml beaker containing a vivid red liquid, placed on what appears to be a black magnetic stirrer. A probe or electrode (possibly a pH meter) is submerged in the liquid, held by a stand. On the left, a blue-gloved hand reaches toward the beaker. On the right are two small jars with yellow caps containing dark samples. The background is blurred with lab equipment in cool tones, making the red liquid stand out strongly as the focal point of the composition.

How the rollout really happened

How LFG went live on Odoo with an embedded LIMS in four months.

  • 2022

    Engagement signed. Two LFG stakeholders embedded with the Dynapps delivery team to define functional scope and product roadmap.

  • 2023

    Go-live on Odoo Quality, Projects, Sales, Invoices and CRM, alongside the integrated LIMS and a new client portal.

  • 2024

    Continuous adjustments based on team feedback; service-basis interaction for ongoing needs.

  • Future

    Migration from Odoo version 14 to version 18.

What we actually built

What LFG built on Odoo: five apps, an embedded LIMS and a client portal.

LFG Paris runs five Odoo applications, Quality, Projects, Sales, Invoices and CRM, alongside the embedded LIMS and a new client portal, replacing a patchwork of separate workflow tools and a non-existent reporting layer in a single switch. Quality manages the lab's ISO IEC 17025-required workflow controls, Projects tracks each certification job, Sales and Invoices close the commercial loop, and CRM keeps the relationship history attached to the gemstone history. The client portal, built into the same platform rather than stitched onto it, gave LFG's clients direct access to certification reports for the first time. A multi-year original scope was compressed into four months, with two LFG stakeholders working alongside the Dynapps team throughout.

Modules: Odoo quality, projects, sales, invoices, CRM, embedded LIMS, client portal.

Our studio

The discipline throughout.

The LIMS belongs inside the ERP, never beside it. Every functional decision was tested against whether it preserved single-platform integrity or eroded it.

A close-up, angled view of an electrical training panel or relay control board, likely FESTO educational equipment used for teaching electrical engineering and automation. The board holds a row of white modules mounted on rails, each covered with arrays of black, red, and blue connection sockets (banana jacks) for wiring circuits. Faint circuit diagrams are printed on each module. On the right side there are colored push buttons (green and red) and what appear to be key switches. The shallow depth of field keeps the front modules sharp while the rest recede into a clean white background.
Laboratories
The deciding factor was that Dynapps was the only provider offering a fully embedded LIMS solution within an ERP, while also being completely compliant with ISO IEC certification.
Aurélien Delaunay

Aurélien Delaunay

Director, LFG Paris
How the work changed us

The architecture is now productized as LIMS.

The architecture LFG Paris runs, with the LIMS sitting inside the ERP rather than alongside it, is the same architecture Dynapps now offers as a productized solution under the name LIMS. The combination of an embedded LIMS and ISO IEC 17025 compliance, alongside Dynapps's own ISO 27001 certification, currently makes Dynapps the only Odoo partner to hold both. The LFG engagement demonstrates the architecture working in production, with passed audits since go-live.

Lab technician operating a touchscreen analyser

The numbers

Since March 2023, compliance, operations and reporting run on one Odoo platform.

The separate compliance, operations and reporting tools are gone. Five Odoo apps, an embedded LIMS and a client portal run on one platform, so the audit trail is produced as a side effect of operating rather than reconstructed each cycle. Every ISO IEC 17025 audit since go-live in March 2023 has passed.

4

months kickoff to go-live, against a multi-year original scope.

14

daily users on the integrated Odoo platform.

ISO IEC 17025

audits since go-live in March 2023.

1

platform with five Odoo apps, the embedded LIMS, and a client portal, on one system.

The real win

From assembling audit evidence to querying it.

LFG Paris no longer assembles audit evidence; the platform produces it. The default question has shifted from “which tools do we need to combine to prove compliance this cycle?” to “where in the system is the trail?” For a 95-year-old institution whose authority rests on the rigour of its records, that is the strategic posture the consolidation was actually for. Operational efficiency is the side effect.

If this sounds familiar, let’s talk.

Wherever your business is heading and wherever it's getting stuck, an expert who has run this kind of work is the right person to start with, before you commit to a direction or a platform.

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